Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy, their son, Desmond Shearwater, and their indoor cat, B.B. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.

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Duncan

November 30, 2011 6:53:43 am

PEFAs are found on every continent on Earth and are not endangered globally, and we need to shift to renewable energy. Surely this is a no-brainer.

@Duncan: well, yes and no. Think globally, act locally. Maybe there are better / less conflicting localities for wind farms nearby that weren’t investigated? This is really a case-by-case thing.
Apart from that detail, I agree: we want energy (those reading this are currently sitting at electricity-driven computers surfing the electricity-driven Internet) and all energy comes at a cost. You can’t have one without the other or rather: you can’t take the one for granted and cry foul at the other.

Why do we think great big wind farms will work any better than any other large scale (factory) farming? It will have some negative impact for sure. Can’t we figure out a way to use diversity in our need for energy? Wind is only one way. I just don’t think a huge farm is good in any capacity. Nature shows us all the time that diversity is the only thing that works on our planet. True I may be ignorant on parts of this subject but I always think we need to do more to imitate nature. We will NEVER do a better job than the natural world. We should stop trying to and learn from our planet. It always does a perfect job.

Industrial turbine farms are hazardous, and especially so when considering the habitat impacts and transmission lines, etc. Local power sources are preferable, so having smaller turbines where the power would be used is better than the huge turbine farms built to provide developers profitable returns including government subsidies.

Surely, as the biologist said, there is no problem with the wind farm since it wouldn’t harm the peregrine population. But from an ethical standpoint, having peregrines getting swatted and killed by the blades could become an issue. Interesting article.

I am definitely a pro renewable energy guy but I was terribly disheartened when I read this article by Jim Wiegand, a wildlife biologist and Vice President of Save the Eagles International.

In the article he mentions the fact that the huge companies that build and manage wind farms have their own army of biologists. I have seen this same problem in local issues with Burrowing Owls. Developers have biologists that report what the developer needs them to report to get their projects approved.

In the article he explains basically that wind farms are killing many more birds and bats than are being reported, especially raptors like Golden Eagles here in California at Altamont Pass. They claim the bigger turbines are safer for birds but actually, it appears that they are more deadly. The fact is, the energy producers don’t give a damn about the birds, they want bigger turbines to produce more energy to make more money. It’s sad.